


Night Terrors

by kamisado



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Mild Gore, Mild Language, Nightmares, Season/Series 07 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-11
Updated: 2012-09-11
Packaged: 2017-11-14 01:37:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamisado/pseuds/kamisado
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Every night the same thing happens. Sam won't let Dean destroy himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Night Terrors

Every night the same thing happens.  
  
They come in from a long day's work; ash in their hair, blood on their hands, weariness in their bones. Words are not spoken but for barely decipherable phonemes, the language of siblings who've faced every moment of life together. Neither man wishes to discuss the events of the day, but the faces of whatever or whoever they kill are still etched behind their eyelids if they stop for a second. Neither man wishes to think about how much easier it would have been with Bobby on the end of the phone with fatherly advice and the tricks of the trade. Neither man wishes to think of how, for the first time in their miserable lifespan, angels are in fact not watching over them, and that now after Cas, they never again would.  
  
Dean takes the first shower, leaving Sam the hot water. The blood trickles down his body in rust-coloured rivulets, and once more he finds fresh wounds that he didn't know he'd gotten. It had been a long time since his body had been perfect, a long time since his fingers were slender not crooked from the badly-healed breaks, his flesh clean from scars but for that one solitary handprint.  
  
And now that, like everything else to do with his angel, was gone too.  
  
Under the hot spray, he focuses on the sound of the droplets dashing the grimy motel tile beneath his feet, blocking out the noise of Sam in the other room. He knows, he just knows that when he leaves the bathroom, Sam will say he's been cleaning his guns or watching a foreign telenovela or packing up to leave first thing in the morning. Dean knows that really he's been hiding the alcohol.  
  
He can't see why it matters really; he's inebriated enough as it is. Just enough to blur the edges, dull the pain; not enough so that his mind's not sharp to finish the job. He can feel it coursing hotly through his veins, all that whisky he'd downed before the hunt started now beckoning him to sleep. No matter how much of it Sam hides, how much his baby brother tries to wean him off it, there's always a way.  
  
Sam just stares innocently when Dean exits the shower, damp hair sticking up in childish tufts.  It’s obvious though, from the way that he skirts around Dean, taking cautious care in not looking at any of the usual hiding places and lumbering into the bathroom. But as soon as the door clicks shut, Dean rubs his eyes with one hand and searches the room awkwardly with the other. It doesn't take long - Sam means well, and he's been doing this for so long he's getting better at it, but he's still predictable.  
  
The first gulp burns. The ones that follow soothe. The last gulp spills down his chest where he lay.  
  
Every night the same thing happens.  
  
By the time Sam emerges from the shower, towel-drying his hair, Dean is unconscious on the bed. He knows that this is no surprise, but he just wishes that someday Dean wouldn't do this to him. Carry out the same routine: shoes off, blankets piled high, knife beneath the pillow, holy water beside the bed. Sam knows that once upon a long time ago, Dean would do this to him, tuck him into bed and now _he_ was the caretaker, the one keeping his big brother safe. Even though their friends were dead and their allies were gone, Sam climbed into his own bed wearily, knowing no matter what, the Winchester brothers would always remain together.  
  
No matter how much he drinks, the alcohol will wear off. Dean can't remember anything beyond perching on the edge of his bed, bottle of jack in hand, but the vague nausea of a hangover fills in the story. He glances over at Sam who's sleeping soundly on his solid motel bed, fingers laced over his torso. Not for the first time, Dean watches his brother's chest rise and fall in slumber. Images of Sam in the same position, as he lay decaying in an abandoned house bleeding into the grimy mattress, flash to Dean's mind and he has to force the bile back down his throat.  
  
Dean’s worry about Sam comes first. He’s frozen upright in the bed, still staring at Sam without really focusing. In his head, _keep your brother safe_ is a constant litany, the first rule. The only rule. And he thinks of how many times he has let Sam down. Sam has lost his soul, lost his future wife, lost his career prospects and his security, lost his faith, lost his life more than once on Dean's count, and now he seems to be losing his mind. Dean does not fear much in this world, but he fears Lucifer, and whatever psychological warfare is raging in his brother's mind, Dean is afraid that this is something that he cannot ever fix.  
  
He lies back on the bed. The clock beside him reads 3:42am but he knows he will not get to sleep now. His head is throbbing as his body rejects the copious amounts of alcohol, a mutiny between flesh and spirit. But it's a distant ache; Dean knows pain, lord knows he knows pain, and once more he vows that anything he suffers on Earth he can bear. Sweat cools on his brow, fists tangle in the blankets: he's knows he's been dreaming again.  
The dreams are always the same. Chains tearing flesh, Alastair’s maniacal laugh, the screams of torment dragged from the depths of his lungs as his organs are ripped from his body, toyed with before his eyes. But then worse, so much worse than the pain he endured. Dean remembers the tortured, the souls _he_ carved: the men, the women, the young and the old. Nobody was exempt; nobody got a free pass through hell. He just carved until there was nothing left; no shred of humanity in his victims, no shred of decency in his heart.  
  
Dean Winchester: murderer, torturer, violator, corruptor. No matter how many people he saved on earth; in Hell his name would still be fresh on their lips, his face in their nightmares.  
  
In his dreams he thrashes; the blankets remind him of coming to in a coffin piled high with soil. He tries to control it; he no longer wakes Sam, but the claustrophobia will never go away.  
  
And then of course, the thoughts of Hell are accompanied with thoughts of Cas. Every time he closes his eyes, he can see the figure in the lake. Castiel, the Angel of the Lord and the Soldier of God.  Castiel the turncoat, rebelling from heaven for a lowly human. Cas, the virgin angel frightened of whore-houses and cannot understand a lie. Cas, the human, but for a speck of angel in him. Cas, the deceiver, the betrayer, the traitor. Cas, the fallen in every sense of the word, prideful and pleading, with promises of redemption Dean knows he cannot fulfill.  
  
And all of these incarnations of Cas, along with every moment they'd ever shared together, died in that lake.  
  
The trench coat sits in the boot of every car they steal. Most of the time he forgets it's there; it's still bloody and torn. But he knows that someday, if Cas will ever return to them, to him, then he will be welcomed back.  
The hours creep by, Dean does not sleep. He is too plagued by his past; what he has done, what he has become. The thoughts never change, never go away, but he’ll never share them. Tomorrow he will get up with a smile on his face, a joke on his lips, and a job on his hands. He will drink and he will fight and he will fuck and he will live the life he was meant to.  
  
But every night the same thing will happen.  
  



End file.
